Would you rather buy 200 Dacia Springs or this Ferrari 288 GTO?

What do you get when you pinpoint the exact location where styling, power and finesse meet along the automotive axis? Dacia is our answer, of course, but we have a sneaking suspicion some might pick something like Ferrari. Pierce the pin further into the graph and you find what’s unofficially known as Ferrari’s hypercar ‘Big Five’.

That includes the F40, F50, Enzo and the LaFerrari, but all four owe their existence to this: the 288 GTO. Released in 1984 as a jumped-up homologation to the 308 GTB for racing - that'll be the Evoluzione - just 272 were ever built. And now, you’ve got an opportunity to own one with 16,500 miles on the clock courtesy of RM Sotheby’s… if you’ve got around three million pounds. Or four. Ouch.

Let’s start by dissecting the design, where there are more than a few obvious cues that reveal the 308 beneath. Those include the same (tiny) rectangular headlamps, ‘H’ shaped bonnet vent design and even the same air inlets resting behind the door.

Aside from some of the more flamboyant touches, like the marmite quad fog lights and miniature ducktail spoiler, it’s fair for you to ask if the GTO is actually anything more than just a 308 that’s been to Italy’s equivalent of Pimp My Ride. And the answer is no.

Those small but significant external changes combine with the uprated 2.9-litre twin-turbo V8 to push close to 400bhp and a top speed of 189mph. In layman’s terms, that made it an instant competitor to the Lamborghini Countach and the Porsche 959, two of the world’s heavyweights at the time.

So, the choice is yours: you can either order an army of around 200 Dacia Springs or Ferrari’s pioneering hypercar. We’d personally go with the former… but what do we know?